Comment on China's latest flying car prototype showcases a breakthrough in urban air mobility, offering a glimpse into how low-altitude flight could soon integrate with everyday transport.

• superniceperson@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Drone swarms already exist. And they work better than self driving cars

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  • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Drone swarms are groups of small, agile devices with no passengers.

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    • superniceperson@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And they communicate in real time while individually checking their collision centers for non swarm obstacles. The technology is 100% there, the flight capabilities do not matter nor the fact it’s a passenger vehicle; we have the algorithm and sensor packages right now to do what you think is a hundred years away.

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      • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You completely glossed over the small, agile part.

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• hydrashok@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There are a whole lot less obstacles and unknowns in the air, as well as more planes (ha!) of separation available than a car.

  When flying, you don’t really need to worry much about random pedestrians, for example.

  If the entire system were completely automated, from the car all the way to ATC, and it’s essentially a taxi that you just tell what location to go to and it handles the rest… well that’s basically air traffic today minus the automated ATC part. (That isn’t to diminish pilots at all; just that I think it’d be a lot easier, in general, to replace a pilot than a taxi driver with automation. )

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  • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you ignore take off and landing, birds, weather conditions, and everything else that makes flying more complex and dangerous than driving on the ground, sure.

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    • hydrashok@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Other than the takeoff and landing, cars have to deal with those obstacles as well.

      A computer running a citywide automated traffic system for cars would have all the same complexity, without the ability to separate traffic in three dimensions.

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      • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        So yeah, if you ignore the parts that make it more complicated it seems easier!

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    • DrunkenPirate@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And if you ignore construction sites with high cranes and not documented buildings. Or overland high voltag power cables, wind mills, hobby drones, and local variations of birds.

      It‘s just taking the complex challenges of autonomous drivinf into the third dimension. Making it even more complex.

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• Death_Equity@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It isn’t that complex. The problem with current autonomous driving is the car can only infer what other cars are doing and what is around it, especially if we are talking about an autonomous car with idiotic vision mapping without lidar.

  With a flying car that is directed by an AI that knows where every other flying object is, what every flying object is going to do, and the locations of every stationary object based on maps and lidar on the vehicle, you can keep collisions far less likely. Taking the human control out of the picture improves the conditions substantially.

  I wouldn’t trust a flying car at all, but I would trust an autonomous one with AI ATC far more than an autonomous car going through a construction zone on a highway in a major city during rush hour.

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The problem with current autonomous driving is the car can only infer what other cars are doing and what is around it

    With a flying car that is directed by an AI that knows where every other flying object is, what every flying object is going to do

    Spoken like someone from a culture where drivers are the only thing around because they have gotten so used to ignoring pedestrians, bicyclists, animals (wild or otherwise),… that might be found on the road and hasn’t considered what else might be in the air at all.

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  • spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You would have a point if the flying car didn’t have to take into account the wind, updrafts, downdrafts, wind sheer off buildings, and a ton of other flying related stuff that helicopter pilots need to take into account which are barely noticeable to cars the majority of the time.

    Then there is landing, the most dangerous part of flying. Imagine if the emergency braking in a csr needed to stop the car without spilling a liquid from an open cup.

    Being on the ground is far less complex than flying, otherwise getting a pilot’s license would be easier than a driver’s permit.

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